Stats for Spikes-Serve Effectiveness

Service errors has become a heated topic when whether to  too grip-it and rip-it in our service games, especially in the men’s game. Girls, women’s coaches and coaches of beginning players have always complained about the service error and have questioned the grip-it-and-rip-it philosophy. Whereas boy’s and men’s  coaches maintain that is it a different game from the girl’s, women’s, and beginner’s game, and those who complain  just don't understand that an easy serve almost always end up an easy serve receive point for the receiving team.

This discussion came back today in one of the postings on VCT. I offhandedly gave a pseudo statistical comparison. I thought about it for a while and came up with a calculated metric that coaches can use to evaluate their team’s service game rather than relying on errors and aces.

I'm pretty sure this is not a universally original idea but it is original for me. I do think this might be an effective metric for teams to track so that they could see where their service game stacks statistically.

The idea is simple, it just uses the points scored statistic, which is ubiquitous. But we would also need to count those points that weren’t scored: the null result from a serve.

First,  we need to count the negative point scoring on our serve

•        Opponents first ball serve receive points
•       Our service error points given to the opponent.

Second, we count the positive point scoring on our serve.

•        Our first ball transition attack points after the opponent’ serve receive attempt.
•        Opponent’s serve receive attacking error points that we gain.
•       This element is where it gets a little amorphous. We need to  count the negative points avoided because the opponent was not able to score on the first ball serve receive attempt. It could be thought of as a neutral play because the opponent did not score off of the serve receive. Since the argument is that a less aggressive serves mean a sure serve receive point for the opponent, we should be credited with a positive because the serve played an decisive  role in affecting the serve receive attack. It should be a plus for us because we avoided losing a sure point regardless of who won the point because of the serve. (These points can be weighted as being less than a full point if necessary.)

We can use simple percentages with the sum of the negative points, plus the positive points, plus the neutral points as the denominator. They should sum up to all the serves we executed.

We can use something similar to the kill percentage formula by putting our positive points we gained minus the negative points we gave to the opponent as the numerator. If the percentage is low or if it is negative, we know our service game is not effective. If it is overwhelming positive, then we know that our service game is effective.

Or we can just look at the positive point percentage versus the negative point percentage.

We might call it the service effectiveness percentage. Coaches can calculate this using their team’s historical statistics in this regard, if they have the data for the neutral points, and assess their service  effective for their season and/or for each game or match. Indeed, you can use this for the general service effectiveness of the team, it doesn’t have to be just about grip-it-and-rip-it.  

Just thinking out loud.

Book Review-Brainscapes by Rebecca Schwarzlose

I am a neophyte in the area of cognitive neuroscience, the brain, and psychology. I became curious about the general area after I read Physical Intelligence by Scott Grafton (https://polymathtobe.blogspot.com/2020/08/book-review-physical-intelligence-by.html), as it dealt with connection between our minds, nervous system, and our bodies. It was after reading that book that I decided to work on learning more about the general area of mind-body connections: the how’s, and the why’s. I tried to create an autodidact’s  course into how we think about learning, and how we learn about learning.

As a part of this effort, I picked three books to focus on as a starter set of readings. The Extended Mind by Annie Murphy Paul (https://polymathtobe.blogspot.com/2022/02/book-review-extended-mind-by-annie.html) , Mind in Motion by Barbara Tversky, and Brainscapes by Rachel Schwarzlose, supplemented by an undergraduate text in the area titled: Cognition, Brain, and Consciousness: Introduction to Cognitive Neuroscience by Bernard J. Baars and Nicole M. Gage. I read the three together, more or less in parallel and consulted the undergraduate text, as my backstop reading. I knew I was taking on a challenge by reading all three books together, but I liked challenges. I tried very hard to keep the contents separate from each other in my head while still trying to integrate and coalesce the concepts from each book.

The author, Rachel Schwarzlose, is a neuroscientist at the Washington University in St. Louis and has the necessary credentials to write about this subject of brain maps. What is remarkable is her ability to communicate with amateurs trying to dive into the area. Her prose is clear and her explanations unfussy and to the point. She does it without smearing over the pertinent and salient details, she is  not afraid of explaining things that doesn’t seem to fit in.

The first two chapters explain why she's undertaking the writing of the book. These chapters lay out the answer to the question: Why should we want to learn about brain maps?

The next two chapters goes over the fundamental brain map for the visual sense V1, the touch map S1, and the auditory map A1 as the next chapter covers the taste and smell maps.

The next few chapters show how all the brain maps work as we function in our everyday lives doing the things that makes us sentient beings. The author dives deep into how we are able to take action, i.e., our M1 motor map; she delves into how the brain maps evolve, grow, and adapt as we mature, and how the brain maps develop to where we are starting from the womb.  It is followed by a chapter on how the brain maps work together in helping us recognizing people’s faces and places as well as a chapter devoted to how brain maps help us  pay attention. This section of the book ends with a chapter on how our comprehension  and communication faculties use brain maps.

I read the penultimate chapter as the contemplations and musings of a neuroscientist. It is full of the latest in research results, as with all of the chapters, but since it is on how the latest technology enables us to mind read and mind write with brain maps, the author does a bit of prognostication, extrapolation, and moral reckoning on the intended and unintended consequences from mind reading and mind writing, a prospect that made me quite uncomfortable, because if we had a way, someone will misuse it, guaranteed.  It was a sobering chapter to read.

The book ends with the author discussing the ways that brain maps has slowed us down, the downside of the maps, as well as how we all are able to overcome the drag on our cognition.

I found the organization of the book logical which made the book enjoyable to read, it is laid out in rational sequences which highlighted the nuanced description of the brain maps.

The illustrations by Paul Kim in the book is stellar, they complemented the descriptive text and brought forth the full and complete vision of what the author had intended, as well as making the text come alive in the readers mind, connecting the concept with the reader’s imagination.

Brainscapes is actually the closest to what I thought I needed in my autodidactic curriculum; it nicely connected the concepts with the physical brain. It was through this book that I was able to map out the physical locations of where the cognitive functions “reside” in our brains. Yet the book also revealed that my naïve, mechanical, and didactic mind did not adequately understand the breadth of the cognitive sciences, nor the depths that it reaches. The positive is that I happily revised my initial assumptions and corrected my own cognitive dissonance; for which I am truly grateful.

Ruminations-A Prime Birthday

It is customary to go into an extended period of nostalgia, summing up a lifetime of remembrances, memories of the life lived, lessons learned, while pontificating on and on about the perceived wisdom while marking a landmark birthday. Usually that would come on the birthdays ending in fives or the zeros.  I did not do so when I turned 60 last year holding true to my contrarian impulse. Unfortunately, you did not dodge the bullet. I just delayed it a year. 

Numbers have been an important part of my life, partly due to my chosen profession, partly due to interest, although my interest did not translate to talent or natural insight.

60 marks in our minds a landmark in our internal timeline because  the number  ends with the number zero; that zero stands out because we chose a base ten numerical system early on in our mathematical evolution. 60 also leads with a six, which is divisible by 2 and 3, making the number divisible by the first two primes.  

60 is categorized as a highly composite number (sometimes called anti-prime ) because it is the sum of its unitary divisors (excluding itself): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highly_composite_number

·       60 is the smallest number divisible by the numbers 1 to 6: there is no smaller number divisible by the numbers 1 to 5. 

·       60 is also divisible by 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20, 30, 60, demonstrating its claim to being highly composite.

·       https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/60_(number)

To jump from 60 to 61, however, is jumping from the ease and flexibility of a highly composite prime to the depths of inflexibility, a prime number.

• 61 the 18th prime number. The first 17 primes are: 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19, 23, 29, 31, 37, 41, 43, 47, 53, 59.
• 61 is also a twin prime with 59. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twin_prime
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/61_(number)

It gives the number a certain cachet, an air of mystery. Mathematicians are fascinated with the primes and prime numbers are also the basis for cryptographic encryption.

By that token, this 61^st year of my having the ability to fill my lungs with air portends to be one of uniqueness. Although this omen may or may not be wholly beneficent.

There are other numbers from my birthday metric that could also be examined. My birthday: March 27, 1961 has some interesting numerical significance: March is the third month of a year and 27 is 3to the third power. The year 1961 in the Gregorian calendar is not a prime, but it is the product of 37 and 53, the 12^th and 16^th prime, a simple composite number.

If I was a real mathematician I would propose some conjecture about some mathematical profundity from those numbers, but I am not a real mathematician, nor did I stay in a Holiday Inn Express last night, so I won’t.

Here comes that pontification on wisdom.

As I look upon both my external and internal lives, I am proud of the equanimity that I have consciously tried to cultivate, as it came to me late in life.

While my personal philosophy is a bricolage of formal philosophies, life experiences, hot takes, and cold reason, I have become content in the maelstrom because of the equanimity cultivation. It is a work in progress, as is everything.

All that I am are a tribute to every one of the friends and family who unknowingly or knowingly  impacted my life in all my 61 years. Your fingerprints are all over my life, my mind, and my behavior. You have made me who I am; ergo, you are as guilty of shaping me as me.  I am not sure if that is good or bad. I just know that it is. So, I thank you.

I look forward to seeing the 19^th prime birthday, which is 67. But one birthday at a time, prime or non-prime.

I will do my best to live my prime year of 61 well. If Amazon doesn’t sue me for copyright infringement first.

Peace.